By Preeti Jha
More than 60 men surround assistant chief Abdi Dikacha. Squatting awkwardly in the sand, they wait in silence for his decision. He controls the only water source left in Dabel - a village parched by drought in north Kenya - and it rests on him to decide whether they can get access. Abdi's voice is firm when he begins to speak. But already he is worried that some of them won't survive.
"They are desperate. I don't want to turn them away. But how to divide this meagre amount of water - humans, goats, schools ..." Abdi trails off. He points to the borehole where hundreds of pastoralists - nomadic herders who depend on animals for their livelihoods - have lined up with camels, sickly and thin.
Ever since water shrank away from the riverbeds in June, it has drawn them in swarms from the surrounding regions. He says: "This morning I saw two women beating each other with sticks. If we don't meet here every day the men will also fight. We meet to avoid conflict."
Three years of failed rains have left nearly 4 million Kenyans dependent on food aid. Thousands of animals have died and malnutrition rates are climbing in a drought that has hit pastoralists the hardest. In many areas they're trekking an extra 20 miles in search of water and pasture, their fate determined by careful negotiations with local leaders such as Abdi. His fear of fighting is not unfounded. According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), since January this year 306 pastoralists have died from conflicts over scarce resources.
"What we're observing are some of the world's first climate-change conflicts," says Jeanine Cooper, head of Ocha Kenya, in Nairobi. "Tribes have fought over water points before now," she says, "but climate change has increased the frequency and duration of drought, exacerbating the competition over scarce resources."
Sitting in the water meeting, Omar Isack knows he is among the luckier ones. This 70-year-old from the neighbouring province was granted permission to stay at the onset of the drought. But occasional access to the borehole has not been enough. With the cane he once used to herd his healthy animals, Omar draws the figure 37 into the sand. "That's how many goats I've lost in the past two days," he says.
Animals that once provided him with milk, meat and school fees are fading fast, like his hopes for the future. He hasn't heard of climate change, but knows that "long rains that should last for three months last for only five days". Clutching his dusty, henna-dyed beard - a common feature in the region's elderly and mostly Muslim pastoralists - he says plainly: "The person in town drinks water. The pastoralist is tired, suffering, angry."
Forty miles away in the town of Moyale, Molu Dika, drought management officer for the government's Arid Lands programme, agrees that the "future is not bright for pastoralists". He is well informed about climate change. "We used to have drought in cycles of 10 years; now every other year there is depressed rainfall," he says.
But decades of neglecting its northern provinces are catching up with the government, faster than it can prepare for the changing climate. A new pipe is under construction to bring water into town. According to Dika, however, most of the 17 boreholes for the 70,000 people in the district have dried up or silted. "Settlements are relying on three water trucks. It's not sufficient," he says.
As the government struggles to provide the most basic infrastructure the task of adapting to climate change has been left to the NGOs. Leading the way in Moyale is Farm-Africa - its strategy of creating alternative livelihoods has already helped 5,000 households find new ways of generating an income - from haymaking co-operatives to new business ventures in camel meat.
Project co-ordinator Boru Dulacha says that traditional ways of adapting to drought - building water points or managing grazing patterns - are no longer enough. "We want to help pastoralists maintain their traditional way of life, but without them being dependent on livestock to survive," he says.
This is a challenge in a district where 86% of the population subsists on relief handouts. But it's seeing positive results. In Godoma, a village 15 miles from Moyale, Hassan Bulle, 31, clears cobwebs from beehives. "They thought it was a joke," he says with a smile.
But when the honey sold out at the market a beekeeping group of eight quickly turned into 20. "We made 25,000 Kenya shillings [nearly £210] last year. It's the main source of my family's income," he says. Business, however, does not appeal to all. Some of the villagers value personal wealth over that of a co-operative, and will not give up the prestige of herding cows. "Animals have always been a part of my identity," Hassan says wistfully. "But they have gone. You have to follow something more economical."
The changing weather patterns and accompanying conflicts and adaptations seen in Kenya are a microcosm of what's happening in other countries across the world. As leaders prepare for the climate- change conference in Copenhagen, in December, Sir David King, director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, says: "How we help developing countries adapt to climate change now is critically important - as by the middle of this century there is likely to be an increase in conflict related to resource scarcity."
The cause of the conflict
But how far is climate change responsible for the tensions already escalating in regions such as north Kenya? Idean Salehyan, assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, says: "The causes of violence are rarely as simple as resource scarcity." Instead, he thinks conflicts are over how resources are managed and are therefore a political problem as much as an environmental one. "Deliberate policies to reward political supporters and undermine opponents can play an important role in determining the distribution of these resources," says Salehyan. "Countries that are accountable to the needs of their people can withstand environmental disasters better than those with undemocratic governments."
Back at the borehole, Abdi has devised a new plan - those with camels can stay for 10 days, goats for seven and cows for three. "It's all we can do until the rains come," he says, raising his voice, for the first time, above the protests that follow. "I know it's not enough. The animals won't produce milk and some will die," he says, as the meeting disbands. "But it should keep the peace until tomorrow."
